computer shuts off during Crysis and 3D Mark Vantage

Nah man it's shutting off in the two programs that use the Quad core intensely.  At 1024 x 768 it's CPU limited.  That CPU is working to it's limits. Yes it's testing the GPU also but the GPU won't fully work with a Q6600 at 2.4ghz.

If your card was crashing you'd get a blue screen or the game itself would crash, you wouldn't just get a power off.  The power off is CPU related.

Hey man - the power supply is fine.  I personally think your CPU is overheating. 

Are you sure the blower fan you added isn't messing up air flow to the CPU?  A lot of times those do more harm than good.  If that's not the case, I would remove the heat sink from the CPU and reseat it using Arctic Silver 5. Sometimes they are put on sloppily. I've seen pictures where people removed them and you could see that half the chip didn't even have thermal paste on it.

But yes I would say with a medium level of certainty that CPU overheating is your issue. 

The reason is the resolution your playing at. 

In higher resolutions the PC is GPU limited while in 1024x768 you are definitely CPU limited.  Your CPU is pushing it to the limits because the GPU can draw faster than the CPU can supply the information. 

Because it's a quad core it's putting out a ton of heat in Crysis and 3d mark vantage.  Other programs dont use all 4 cores so you won't get the same overheating issue.

I would lean more toward the 8800. if it is a heat issue.

Pick up a copy of Core temp to monitor you CPU temps.

Pick up a copy of GPU-z to monitor your GPU temps.

Ditch the Physics card. Not needed especially with the 8800.

Pick up a copy of OOCT to run a system test on your processor

I can run Cyrsis on my rig which is very similar to yours n my 22 in monitor with no problems. Of course i do not have everything on high but most of it is.

3Dmarks is a more graphics card tester than CPU although it will provide a benchmark of the CPU.

the physX card doesn't work anyway. i ran a card diagnostics test in the Nvidia PhysX control panel and it says that it failed - so i think it's busted. i've e-mailed BFGTech support to find if they can send a replacement. i don't think i'll put it in the system again - prob in another computer, but i still want my £100's worth out of it.

so if 1024x768 is CPU limited, does that mean i have to choose a different resolution in order to use the graphics card? what if i turn it up to 1680x1050 and turn down shadows and object detail to medium?? will that help?

because the CPU, heatsink and fan is installed by Dell I am a bit worried about fiddling with what they have done. of all components in the PC, the CPU freaks me out lol, and am too scared to touch it. i would want to do watercooling but am so worried i'd bust everything.

so do you think i should buy a new heatsink and fan? or a water cooling system then?

look at my specs we are almost identical and I have no issues with Crysis. Yes you might need to back off on a couple of settings. If you peruse the internet you will find that there are few systems that can run the game at all high settings. The game was designed for hardware that is not even out yet.

The only other option you might want to look at is adjusting the video card fan speed. The best way to do this is with a free program call Riviatuner. It has a bit of learning curve but it will allow you setup profiles where in which you can adjust the fan speed of the GPU and keep it cooler.

I cannot aggreee with the CPU theroy as previously posted. There is almost nothing reported on this on the net, and Crysis is one of the few games that is designed to utilize all four cores. 

Pick up a copy of Coretemp and run it to check your CPU temps. It should idle in the low to mid 30's and under load bump up to the low to mid 40's. I have never seen mine go over 43 after a few hours of gaming and it will drop pretty quick. The stock cooler on these system performs very well on a Q6600. 

Sigh.... DaveT yours works fine probably because the thermal paste was applied properly! 

Did I say everyone who uses that chip would crash? No.

You also don't have a blower that can sometimes mess up air flow. 

Did you not read my post? 

There are many times when Dells sloppily puts the thermal paste on, so the CPU does not make good contact with the heat sink. SEARCH THE FORUMS.

Yours must be put on fine.

Do your homework guys - at low resolutions games and graphics are CPU LIMITED. At high resolutions games are GPU LIMITED.  If you run a game at 2560x1600 it practically doesn't matter what CPU you have because none can get the information to the GPU faster than the GPU can process it.  At low resolutions games become CPU LIMITED because the GPU can process low resolutions extremely fast, to the point where the CPU just can't keep up with the GPUs capabilities.

So if you are running a program that uses all 4 cores at a low resolution, each core is working extremely hard and generating a ton of heat!!

IT IS THE CPU. IT CRASHES IN THE ONLY TWO PROGRAMS THAT USE THE ALL 4 CORES IN LOW RES. END OF STORY.

REMOVE THE HEAT SINK, REAPPLY THERMAL PAST (ARCTIC SILVER 5) AND PROBLEM WILL MOST LIKELY BE SOLVED. You might also have to take out the blower.  Google some benchmarks - they usually increase the heat in a case, which is why hardware enthusiasts will never use one.

While I can agree about the paste the fan I doubt as it is on the back of the case. Which  If anything will increase the cooling of the case. This is documented with other on this board.

I will reserve any further judgement untill I see temp values.

How about using a program like Real Temp as shown below to monitor your CPU temps. it shows all 4 cores.

it seems every part of my computer is literally dropping like flies. first the physX card blew, then the X-Fi, and finally the RAID. i got an error saying that there was a RAID failure. i figured i'd have to backup everything and rebuild the computer.

so... i ran checkdisk which froze because the disk was so bad. i then attempted to reconfigure HDD settings in the BIOS and then the RAID setup. so then i backed up my files, whilst doing so the hard drive would cut out, i'd have to do a system restore and try again.

i had to further fiddle with the RAID settings, just simple things like turning the RAID off and on again just so that Vista would detect the drive so that i could do a clean install. finally it worked. i deleted the partition and installed everything again. re-installed all the drivers and decided to install all my games on a second hard drive, away from the system drive which so far has helped a lot, but haven't tried Crysis yet.

i actually don't really like using RAID. for some reason i just don't feel as though my data is safe. i tried to remove the RAID feature entirely and just go with 2x 500gb hard drives but that did not work for some reason so gave up. i've heard many say it brings performance gains and while i can agree, i think it causes more problems in the long run, for one it is unreliable. either that or i've had a bad run.

i just rebuilt the computer and re-installed everything. low and behold, the computer cut off again, this time during TimeShift, now what do i do? i feel like i have to return the card to the shop and go back to my 8800GTX